How To Survive The Age of Anxiety

The price of living in technologically advanced societies is the increasing level of speed, pressure, and stress we allow to rule our lives. We expect things to move faster, more efficiently; we want quick-fixes for any ailments or discomforts; we get frustrated or give up if our dreams don’t come true immediately or we can’t find what we’re looking for at the click of a button.

We also place demands on ourselves and others that create a deeper sense of disconnection, which then translates as self-doubt and fear, or anxiety and depression. From a spiritual perspective, being anxious means you’re letting your emotional energy get scattered—pulled in different directions. It often feels like floating in space with nothing to hold on to, and it can escalate to panic, if the internal pressure triggers the fear of death (oftentimes from soul memory, not logical reasons).

Depression usually goes in the opposite direction: you unconsciously direct toward yourself unresolved anger or hatred or lack of love from past traumatic experiences. In both these tendencies, a pattern of judgment and guilt colors your self-perception with beliefs of being vulnerable or wrong—the need to be ‘fixed,’ to become someone other than who you are, someone you’re expected or supposed to be. This is how the ego-mind traps you in the wounded child archetype, to remain in charge of your choices while you feel you have no control over your mental states.

When I was in primary school, some teachers would give us time-outs for speaking in class that consisted in facing a corner of the classroom for 5 to 10 minutes. An eternity back then. With my back to the class, I could still hear and follow what was going on, but I couldn’t participate. The punishment was not only the humiliation of being observed by your peers for doing something ‘wrong,’ but also feeling alienated from the group. If you turned your head, out of curiosity (remember this was primary school!), the time-out was extended.

This is a good way to illustrate the patterns of judgment and guilt that rule our modern world and that the ego-mind creates to keep you small and confused, or anxious and deflated. When you’re facing a classroom corner, there’s no way to move forward; it imprisons you without a cage, because your perception is limited to what’s in front of you: a hard angle you can’t bend, break, or pierce through. The ego-mind taints your self-perception in a similar manner.

At the core of this pattern is your sense of otherness (see Does Your Sense of Otherness Keep You Small?) stirring idealized self-images you internalized growing up: how to be good, useful, smart, obedient, nice, and so on, to become a functional individual in a highly dysfunctional world. That is, behaving according to other people’s expectations and needs in order to feel valuable, regardless of what you really wanted. Your sense of otherness is how you internalized the world around you along with the collective ego.

These self-images are very demanding, so if for any reason you fail to fulfill them, they make you feel like you’re doing something wrong, immediately triggering that judgment and guilt you learned so well growing up—through the behavior you identified your worth with. They reinforce a split self-perception that keeps you stuck and disconnected: the acceptable and the non-acceptable parts; what is ‘good’ in you that must fix what is ‘bad,’ to fit and function in the world. An ongoing battle that’s impossible to win.

Healing Is Embracing All of Who You Are

But spiritual healing is the process of soul integration, and it can’t happen if you’re pulled in different directions trying to match a fixed, compartmentalized idea of yourself. You are a multidimensional soul, an infinite spark of Consciousness incarnated in a human body, which makes you complex and multi-layered. Trying to fixate on a permanent (or rather, stagnant) perception of yourself, thinking “I am this or that” further disconnects you from the flow of your life and the spectrum of possibilities you really are.

Another aspect of this distorted self-perception is the illusion the ego-mind creates to keep you both in the past (with either pleasant or painful memories) and projecting wishes and desires into the future. In other words, preventing you from ever being fully anchored in the present moment, which is your place of power, because it centers you in yourself, where you tap into the peace and clarity of Divine Consciousness.

You can start breaking this type of rigid pattern by being completely honest with yourself—to identify all of them—and then developing the mental discipline to:

Recognize that your perception is colored by past memories and impressions—most of which are false beliefs you no longer have to believe.

Bring your awareness to the center from which all experience emerges—the inner witness you must nurture to eventually realize your Self.

Breathe deeply into your body to remain anchored in the present (the physical body only lives in the present), and focused on the task at hand.

Be aware of your impulses and ask yourself questions such as, “What self-image is making me afraid/anxious/guilty/angered?” “Whose internalized expectations am I trying to fulfill?” “What is my ego so attached to, to keep me in this mental state?”

When discomfort, resistance, or negative emotions arise, simply observe and let them be—no need to fight or change anything, just feel, observe and accept.

Remind yourself that everything is layers of energy, but none of them are permanent; whether painful or pleasant, they’re just passing through to give you the illusion of individualized experiences.

Trust the spiritual forces within to guide and support you, to develop, nurture, or let go of something through each experience, and stop chasing a perfect yet distorted self-image that robs you of being fully present and enjoy life.

These guidelines will help you awaken the quiet, inner witness (which is your true Self) to place your awareness above the mundane and dysfunctional fixations of the collective ego we call the world. Contact me today if you’re ready to cultivate a 5th-dimensional perception of life, to transcend the density and suffering of this 3rd-dimensional, highly egoic reality!